December Newsletter 2018

I’ve felt the sand between my toes and the water over my head as I dived through the waves at Palm Beach last weekend. It was blissful. There’s something restorative about the beginning of an Australian summer and I was lucky to spend a glorious, relaxing 25 hours with two girlfriends last weekend. I feel I am getting back my mojo after the challenges of international travel.This week I loved seeing and hearing Bohemian Rhapsody with a girlfriend (though Mike Moran, Freddie Mercury’s Musical Director said the film was inaccurate in that Freddie had many friends and was much loved), laughed at The Wharf Review thanks to Robert Oatley Wines. One of the funniest in years and worth trying to get a ticket. I also went to something so secret, I can’t say until next year!I can’t wait to get into the Christmas spirit. I am going to put up my tree tonight (first night at home since I returned – shhhhhhhhhh) and Christmas lights on my balcony. Christmas parties are starting and I have three Christmas carols concerts in the diary. I am especially looking forward to theBrandenburg Orchestra’s Noel Noel, always very special. My Mum would play Christmas carols on the record player and radio from December 1, a wonderful tradition carried on by my sister. We love a bit of a singalong. Kris Kringles are planned for ourFlame MediaChristmas party here in Sydney and also for our large family. I’m off Christmas shopping this weekend too, and excited to be shopping for my granddaughter Isabel who will be two on Christmas Day and is coming to Sydney with her Mum and Dad. As my son Blair would have said “Happy Christmas Times”.

FRUIT

3 weeks until Christmas and the 2018 cherry season is well and truly underway with a wide range of varieties and sizes. Quality is excellent. 2 kilo boxes make a lovely gift at $15-$50.

With their juicy, luscious flesh and fragrant aroma, peaches and nectarines are a popular choice. Both white and yellow flesh fruit is plentiful and the quality outstanding.

Go berry crazy with blueberries, strawberries, blackberries and raspberries. Mix up your berries and serve with mangoes or get creative with asummer berry puddingfor the festive season. This make a head dessert freezes well.

Blushing apricots make a scrumptious and nutritious snack, as apricots are rich in vitamin A and C. Serve apricots with turkey or chicken or make tangy relish with these gems or bake a deliciousApricot & Almond Upside-Down Cake.

Early Queen, Red Gems and Wilson and the first of the blood plums are now available..

New season grapes are plump and sweet. Select bunches that are plump and firmly attached to stem. Grapes are a good source of dietary fibre and are low in kilojoules. The main varieties at the moment are Menindee and Flame seedless.

Chilled, juicy rosy-fleshed watermelon wedges make the ultimate thirst quencher on hot summer days. Choose cut watermelon with deep even colour. Pack icy cold watermelon wedges to take to the pool, beach or on a picnic. Team watermelon wedges with baby rocket, Persian feta and black olives in a cool summer salad.

For value, convenience and versatility you can’t bet creamy Innisfail bananas. Put them on a paddlepop stick and freeze for a refreshing snack.

The price of juicy, exotic tasting lychees varies with size of the fruit and the seed. Small seed varieties such as Fay Zee Sui are selling for approx. $18-$20 a kilo while large seed varieties such as Bengal have less flesh and can be picked up for $10 -$15 a kilo

With its delicious aniseed flavour and crisp texture, baby fennel adds vibrancy to spring salads. It has virtually no fat and few kilojoules, and refreshing raw or cooked. Add fennel to a salad like thisKumato, fennel, bean & haloumi salad.

Tomatoes are at their best in summer with fuller flavour so try a variety: truss cherry tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, salad and truss tomatoes, or my favourite heirloom tomatoes. This Tomato, fennel & burrata saladis delicious way to enjoy the colour and flavour of tomatoes.

Zucchini are a great buy. Try slicing them in half lengthwise, score, then brush with a little olive oil and place on the barbecue or grill plate, cook turning once until tender.

Full of energy and warmth, kumara is excellent value. Kumara is versatile; it can be baked, fried, boiled, steamed or used instead of potato in most recipes. This festiveMexican Chilli, Sweetcorn & Kumara Saladis packed with goodness and flavour.

Start cool with crispy salads made with versatile Cos and Iceberg lettuce.

Crunchy radishes with their colourful skin and crisp-white flesh have a unique peppery flavour. Use them in salads and pickles.

They are a good source of vitamin C, which assists the normal functioning of the body’s immune system; provide folate, a B vitamin needed for normal cell division and for blood cells and provides small amounts of iron and other minerals and vitamins

To prepare radishes:
wash well and trim the leaves. To store, wrap radishes in paper towels and refrigerate in an airtight container. For ultra-crisp radishes, plunge them into a bowl of iced water for 10 minutes before serving.

Add very thinly sliced radish to salads, slaws and sandwich fillings. In the French style, simply serve halved radishes with unsalted chilled butter and sea salt.

To pickle radishesWith their colour and crisp texture, radishes are ideal for pickling. To make pickled radish, place 1 cup white wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons caster sugar and ½ tsp black peppercorns in a saucepan and stir over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Set aside to cool. Place 2 bunches washed, trimmed and thinly sliced radishes into a sterilised jar. Cover with cooled vinegar mixture. Seal and store in the fridge.

Clockwise from top left: common, golden, French and watermelon radishes

The best way to cut a mango above, then lean over the sink and eat or scrape off with a spoon

I look forward to mango season every year as I never buy them imported ones out of season. How to pick a ripe mango?

LOOK at the mango.The ideal mango should be football-shaped, so you should choose mangoes that are full, plump and rounded, especially around the stem. Sometimes ripe mangoes will have brown spots or speckles, which is perfectly normal.

Do not pick flat or thin mangoes because they are likely to be stringy. Avoid choosing mangoes with wrinkled or shriveled skin because they are old.

Touch and feel the mango. Gently feel the mango. Ripe mangoes will be slightly soft to the touch just like avocados and peaches, but not soft or mushy enough to where your fingers sink into or through the skin.

If you do not plan on eating the mango for a few days, better to choose a mango with firmer skin and let it ripen some at home.

Smell mangoes near where their stems were attached to the tree. Ripe mangoes will always have a strong, sweet, fragrant and fruity aroma around the stem. If it smells like you’d want to eat it, you’re in business. Since mangoes have a high natural sugar content, they will ferment naturally, so a sour smell is a distinctive sign the mango is overripe. Don’t buy it.

Look at colour last. In general, the colour of mangoes is not the best way to look for ripeness. Since the colours of ripe mangoes can be bright yellow, green, pink, or red depending on the variety and season, colour alone won’t necessarily tell you much about the ripeness of a mango. Instead, familiarise yourself with the different varieties of mangoes.

Sleep is a topic dear to my heart as I often get poor or interrupted sleep with all the travelling I do – especially this last trip home as I flew at night form London to Singapore and overnight from Singapore to Sydney. Sunlight is a great way to get your body in the right time zone and a couple of years ago a gym instructor told me that not getting enough sleep encouraged weight gain. A recent study actually found that short sleep durations lead to a 15 percent increase in the hunger hormone ghrelin and a 15 percent decrease in the satiety hormone leptin. Now I have read a very interesting piece by nutritionist Lyn Green and thought it worth sharing. I found the full piece The secret to weight loss is in the bedroom and found it most insightful. In summary her top 5 tips to improving sleep are:1. Make it 7-8 hours: To make this easier, try creating a bedtime ritual to help your body wind-down; take a bath, read a book, or meditate.2. Keep it consist: To support your circadian rhythm, go to bed and wake up around the same time each day, even on weekends. After awhile, you’ll feel your body settle into a schedule and it will become easy to maintain a consistent sleeping pattern.3. Remove all blue light: Computers screens, phone screens and other technology can have a negative effect on our hormone levels by reducing melatonin production. Shut down your screens at least an hour before bed for a better night’s sleep.4. Turn off the lights: Darkness tells your body to sleep by releasing the natural sleep hormone melatonin. Light suppresses this hormone so be sure to turn off all lights and close the blinds before going to bed.5. Watch what you eat: Avoid eating heavy meals, consuming alcohol or foods containing high sugar or caffeine close to bedtime!

Book Club Give-away

Book Club DVD – it could be yours

I absolutely love watching chick flicks on planes. On my way home, I really enjoyed Book Club. Diane (Diane Keaton) is recently widowed after 40 years of marriage. Vivian (Jane Fonda) enjoys her men with no strings attached. Sharon (Candice Bergen) is still working through a decades-old divorce. Carol’s (Mary Steenburgen) marriage is in a slump after 35 years. These lifelong friends’ lives are turned upside down to hilarious ends when their book club tackles the infamous Fifty Shades of Grey . From discovering new romance to rekindling old flames, they inspire each other to make their next chapter the best chapter. Forget whether you like the book or not (I find it appallingly written)the movie is funny, warm and charming.
To celebrate the release on DVD – and yes, I am an old-fashioned girl who loves DVDs (I still have a video player and record turntable for my vinyls) I have 10 copies of the DVD (or Blu-Ray) worth $39.95 to give away.
Then invite your friends over, open a bottle or two (as they do in the movie) and enjoy.To enter: tell me your favourite recipe in this newsletter and why OR tell me what recipes you would like to see in my weekly updates in the run-up to ChristmasEmail: lyndey@lyndeymilan.com and the 10 winners will be announced in my weekly update at the end of next week. So be sure to be registered on the website to get the weekly update in your inbox.

Vegetarianism and veganism is on the rise in both the UK and Australia and I am sure other places too. Heaven Leigh, a third-generation restaurateur and owner of Bodhi Restaurant at Cook and Phillip Park, Sydney makes a cogent argument in Good Food Why plant-based is more palatable than vegan.

Just before I left for London in September I had a stunning dinner at Sixpenny. A superb combination of food, wine, service and ambience. I was delighted to read in Gourmet Traveller that when Bridget Raffal became sommelier in 2017, she noticed there were no women on the winelist. Read how A sommelier aims for wine list equality.

Tipping in Australia is discretionary. It is not required as a wage supplement but is a good way of showing one’s appreciation for staff who provide excellent service. But when you add a tip to your credit card account – who gets the funds? Jeremy Ryland explains the complexities in Who is getting your tip.

Brokenwood Wines, led by Managing Director, Chief Winemaker and former Chairman of Judges of the Sydney Royal Wine show, Iain Riggs AM, is officially opening the doors to its new Cellar Door development this Saturday 8 December. The new Cellar Door will be one of the largest in the Hunter Valley wine region, covering 1,400 square metres and able to accommodate more than 250,000 visitors annually. It replaces the original Cellar Door built in 1975 by the winery’s founders James Halliday, Tony Albert and John Beeston.

The new complex includes a large tasting room with circular tasting ‘pods’, an expansive outdoor terrace, two private tasting rooms, two private dining rooms, a wine museum and a lounge area. The two dining venues led by Andrew and Janet Wright, known for The Cellar Restaurant at Hunter Valley Gardens, will include casual eatery, Cru Bar + Pantry and modern dining room, The Wood Restaurant.

The Wood Restaurant is open for lunch daily and dinner on Friday and Saturday evenings, offering contemporary Australian dishes with a strong focus on seafood, which will also be available for retail along with condiments. Located out in the lounge area, Cru Bar + Pantry is open for breakfast, lunch and snacks everyday, serving homemade pies, toasties, wood-fired pizzas and cheese and charcuterie for a more casual dining experience. Premium and iconic Brokenwood wines are available at both venues, including an Enomatic self-service dispenser that will serve rare wines not ordinarily available for tasting at the Cellar Door.

401-427 McDonalds Rd
Pokolbin, NSW 2320
(02) 4998 7559
https://www.brokenwood.com.auTime Out shares 22 things to do in Sydney this weekend including some Christmas markets (I was so sorry to be too early for the one in Munich).

Japan or Puglia?

Japan will be a new destination for me next year, hosting a land content tour here and a repeat of my land content only trip to Puglia in October 2019. Escorted travel takes all the worry and stress away and ensures a great experience.

Come and join me on one of my tours planned for next year:
Japan – A Culinary & Cultural Adventure 14-25 May 2019 with Mary Rossi Travel. I have known the MD, Claudia Rossi since high school and we have worked to come up with a very special itinerary. She and her husband are coming too and it promises to be an amazing trip. We have an upper limit of 20 people and there is a reasonable single supplement. Details here.

Hand-making bread in the time-honoured traditional way in Basilicata, just one of the authentic experiences

The Food Adventure in Puglia and Basilicata trip in May with Southern Visions was a great success and so we are going to repeat it 14 – 20 October, 2019. The program is very similar to what we did this year . Details here.

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About Lyndey

Lyndey Milan, Australian home cook hero, combines a thirst for life and a sense of fun with a love of good food and sparkling shiraz. A familiar face on television and in print, she been instrumental in changing the way Australians think and feel about food and wine for over thirty years.